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Master Comics Vol 1 15
, climbs over the garden wall undetected. He backstabs one cop to death, then gives some orders to two henchmen coming over the wall after him, then breaks into the house and confronts Van Koff, who is completely terrified at the sight of him. Van Koff tries to pull a gun, and gets a bulletwound for trying it, but the shot attracts some of the outside cops, who now charge into the house. Two of them get mortally wounded, before Bulletman and Bulletgirl fly into the room, and make short work of the two shooters. Mr. Murder slips out of the room, undetected, and takes Van Koff with him. As Sgt. Kent and more cops run into the room, the Bullets fly out of a window to search for these two. Mr. Murder has escaped, with Van Koff, and gotten all the way back to his ramshackle hideout, Hawkmoor. Mr. Murder wants Van Koff to sign some papers, and directs his henchman "Sticker" to persuade him. Bulletman and Bulletgirl fly into the room and knock down both bad guys, but again Mr. Murder slips out of the room undetected while Sticker is getting demolished. Bulletgirl hunts for Mr. Murder on the roof, where he gets the drop on her, and snatches her Gravity Regulator Helmet right off her head, then pushes her off the roof. Bulletman swoops in and catches her. Mr. Murder shoots at Bulletman, and he dodges the bullets, then swoops down and lays a more complete beating on Mr. Murder. This time he's knocked out, plus he turns out to really be Reilly, the attorney, wearing a latex mask. | Appearing1 = Featured Characters: * Supporting Characters: * * Sergeant Kent Antagonists: * ** two henchburglars ** "Sticker", a torturer Other Characters: * Mr. Van Koff * Mrs. Van Koff * ten Police Officers Locations: * area ** Police HQ ** Van Koff Estate ** Hawkmoor Items: * two s | Writer2_1 = | Penciler2_1 = Ken Battefield | Inker2_1 = | StoryTitle2 = The Devil's Dagger: "The Paralysis Gas" | Synopsis2 = Professor Duprez develops a new type of paralyzing gas and demonstrates it for reporter Ken Wyman. During the interview three thugs barge into the lab, waving guns and making demands. The reporter tackles one gangster (Spike) and punches him into a worktable, spilling a jar of the gas. Spike gets paralyzed, but the other two get away with a jar of the gas and a set of Duprez's notes. Wyman goes thru Spike's pockets and finds a clue, a note from "Mr. H," with instructions on where to deliver the loot. Ken then calls Pat, his assistant, who promptly arrives in the Speed Ghost. They drive out in the countryside to the old Woodhull house, then the Devil's Dagger approaches the house on foot, while Pat radios the police. In the house, two hoods deliver the sample and the notes to Mr. H, who wants to know why Spike is missing, so they tell him that Ken Wyman made trouble for them, yet again. Mr. H is real tired of Ken Wyman now, and resolves to attend to him next. Right then, the Devil's Dagger flings his trademark stiletto into the room, and it sticks in the table right in front of Mr. H. He and his four gunmen are shocked and upset. Dagger retreats into the darkness outside, while H exhorts his henchmen to shoot at him, but they just can't see him. Pat throws a rock at the house; they shoot at that. While that goes on, the Devil's Dagger, in his cape and top hat, sneaks into the same room, from another window, steals the notes, uses the gas on the gangsters, and jumps back out the window. The henchmen are paralyzed, but Mr. H gets away, and sprints across the farmhouse's lawn towards the nearby woods. While the cops are still arriving, the Devil's Dagger and his driver Pat pursue Mr. H on foot, until H turns and shoots Pat in the leg. Mr. H gets away. | Appearing2 = Featured Characters: * Supporting Characters: * Pat Gleason, Wyman's assistant Antagonists: * ** Spike ** four more gunmen Other Characters: * Professor Duprez Locations: * ** Duprez Laboratories, on the outskirts ** Woodhull House, in the country Items: * Duprez's Paralysis Gas * Duprez's Antidote * Devil's Dagger's Dagger Vehicles: * Wyman's "Speed Ghost" roadster | Writer3_1 = | Penciler3_1 = George Tuska | Inker3_1 = George Tuska | StoryTitle3 = El Carim, Master of Magic: "The Summons of Wizzar" | Synopsis3 = El Carim, the Master of Magic, is visited by the spirit of Wizzar, the Father of All Magic, who tells him that the far-off planet of Zaam is now being ruled by the treacherous Rashtala, who has murdered King Rhongu, and who holds Princess Illean in prison. Wizzar provides El Carim with Wodan's Fire Chariot, and sends him off to right this wrong. Riding behind Pizar & Wangar, El Carim quickly arrives at planet Zaam. His approach is detected by Manghi, a Zaamian astronomer, but Rashtala disbelieves his report, at first. After all, Wodan's Chariot hasn't been seen since Wizzar's death, but the astronomer sticks to his story. Rashtala calls out all of his guards, the general populace mills about in near panic, and El Carim lands his chariot outside of the main town, sending the mighty horses away to rest. Soldiers sprint out to arrest El Carim and he quietly goes along with them to Rashtala's throne room, and states his mission there. Rashtala lies about Princess Illean being already dead, but just then a ragged, desperate man scrambles into the room and declares Illean to be alive and Rashtala to be a liar. Rashtala orders his guards to take away both this guy and El Carim, but with a single gesture the Master of Magic has enveloped himself and his informant in a flaming cloud of smoke; they vanish. Reappearing outside the palace, El Carim asks the guy for directions to the tower where Illean is held; it's several leagues away. Soon they are set upon by a large number of spearmen, but with another gesture El Carim turns them into trees, with human heads. Meanwhile Rashtala and Manghi are consulting with an old witch; she says the magic words: "BALOONGA, BANGA! BANGA . . . . BALOONGA!", then warns them: the Man of the Chariot is El Carim, heir to the power of Wizzar! Rashtala laughingly gloats that the mighty El Carim is already a prisoner of his spearmen. That's when he gets the news that they've all been turned into trees. El Carim and his still-unnamed pal show up at the main gate of the prison tower and demand entrance; they are rudely rebuffed and lied to, still with the same story about Illean being dead, followed up by volleys of archery. El Carim sends all the arrows directly back where they came from, and some of the archers are killed. The drawbridge is dropped and the tower's garrison charges out to attack El Carim, who with one gesture and a few words, sets them to fighting among themselves. The nameless guy spots the Princess at a tower window, and El Carim conjures up a very long stairway for her to descend to ground level. They then return to Rashtala's capital and confront the pretender, interrupting his windbag speech about how he is now the rightful king because of Illean being dead. El Carim does another big magic whammy, and suddenly Rashtala is seated on his throne, with his head in a noose, with the rope running up to a very tall branch. Goodbyes are said, and El Carim flies away in Wodan's Chariot. | Appearing3 = Featured Characters: * Supporting Characters: * Wizzar Antagonists: * Rashtala ** his spearmen ** his archers * Manghi * old witch Other Characters: * King Rhongu * Princess Illean * unnamed dungeon escapee Locations: * Zaam, a planet Vehicles: * Wodan's Chariot ** Pizar & Wangar, Wodan's chariot horses | Writer4_1 = | Penciler4_1 = Charles Sultan | Inker4_1 = Charles Sultan | StoryTitle4 = Minute-Man the One Man Army: "Nuggerud the Agitator" | Synopsis4 = Pvt. Weston and his boss the Sergeant encounter a street-screeching anti-war rabble-rouser. The Sergeant starts a fracas with this creep's adherants, and at least three of them pile onto him, and he gets head-konked. Pvt. Weston quickly changes clothes and jumps into the fistfight as Minute-Man. He quickly routs the troublemakers then changes back into his Army uniform before the Sergeant regathers his wits. In their basement lair, the rabble-rouser reports to his boss, the Chief of Agitation, Nuggerud, who decides to set a trap for this pesky Minute-Man. Soon in Washington, the Embassy of Rinaldo is blown up. This is the first step in an elaborate scheme to entrap Minute-Man in a booby-trapped villain hideout, and pretty soon Minute-Man is chained up in a dungeon under an old house. The Agitator's plan is to blow up this house with Minute-Man inside it, in a way that will make it look as if he were behind the earlier embassy-destroying explosion. While he's busy setting that up, one henchman, the street-speaker, stupidly steps too close to Minute-Man, who grabs him in a leg-lock and squeezes until he unlocks Jack's shackles. Leaving this fool locked up in this place, Minute-Man runs to confront the other spies, and makes very short work of two henchmen. Nuggerud is able to race out of the place on a motorcycle, but Jack pounces on him before he gets very far. Minute-Man grapples with Nuggerud while he's riding a motorcycle; they crash thru a wooden fence, Jack catches a nearby branch, Nuggerud rides right over a precipice, and is seen no more. Once Minute-Man has rounded up the remaining thugs and the whole story has been well-publicized, General Milton and the State Department are able to smooth over America's relationship with Rinaldo. | Appearing4 = Featured Characters: * Supporting Characters: * U.S. , G-2 * General Milton (knows Jack's double identity) * Sergeant of Weston's unit (does not know) Antagonists: * Nuggerud, Chief of Agitation (wears a monocle and uses a cigarette holder) ** bearded rabble rouser *** at least three fifth-columnist thugs Locations: * area ** Embassy of Rinaldo ** Gen. Milton's office ** Nuggerud's secret lair. * Rinaldo, a South American republic | Writer5_1 = | Penciler5_1 = Rafael Astarita | Inker5_1 = Rafael Astarita | StoryTitle5 = Capt. Venture and the Planet Princess: "The Ice Planet" | Synopsis5 = Captain Venture and the Planet Princess return to the Land of the Djungs, still seeking to bring down King Leon. First they must rescue Tazon from Leon's dungeons. After that they will need to enlist the aid of the money-mad King of the Ice Planet. Using their Rocket Sled, they sneak around to one side of Leon's palace, then Venture finds a secret door into the dungeon. He finds Tazon, being tortured, and he punches one torturer while the other runs away. Three guards run into the room, but Venture draws his Destructo Gun and blows out the ceiling, then he, Zyra, and Tazon fly out thru the gap. They then fly by Rocket Sled to the Ice Planet. Meanwhile the runaway hunchbacked torturer runs to tell the King what's going on, and to curry favor, he shows King Leon the Vis-Audiograph, which shows an image of Venture and Zyra and Tazon, traveling to the Ice Planet. To beat them to the punch, Leon uses the Wave Machine to transmit himself to the Ice Planet, planning to buy out the Ice King himself. After some haggling, Leon and Frigio make a deal: for one million ducats, up front, Frigio will deliver Captain Venture's head, and Princess Zyra unharmed, to Leon. Leon pays up. The Rocket Sled lands on the Ice Planet and King Frigio's troops ambush Captain Venture. Once they're secure, Frigio reneges on his deal, and directs his soldiers to prepare the Princess to be sacrificed to the Ice God, Emul, and to throw Leon into the torture chamber. Venture and Taz are already in there. Venture strains and strives, then snaps the manacles that had been holding him in place. A sword-wielding guard runs into the room but Captain Venture kills him with a big axe, then frees Tazon and Leon. They run to the Ceremonial Chamber, where the sacrifice ritual is just getting started. Captain Venture punches out the main priest, while for no apparent reason the large yellow idol of the Ice God, Emul, begins to crumble. Good guys plus Leon all escape the palace, in one of Frigio's Ice Machines. As the Ice Machine gets airborne, Frigio's guards fire a special artillery piece at it, which encases the machine in a block of heavy ice, crashing it. King Frigio gloats, and even comes to terms with the Princess's imminent death, after all, "for the god Emul is no more." | Appearing5 = Featured Characters: * * Supporting Characters: * Tazon Antagonists: * King Leon ** Djungs *** hunchback torturer *** hunchback torturer's assistant * King Frigio ** Ice Planet soldiers * Emul, Ice God Locations: * Land of the Djungs * Ice Planet Items: * Venture's Destructo Gun * Leon's Vis-Audiograph * Leon's Wave Machine * Frigio's Ice Cannon Vehicles: * Zyra's Rocket Sled * Frigio's Ice Machines | Writer6_1 = | Penciler6_1 = Ken Battefield | Inker6_1 = Ken Battefield | StoryTitle6 = Companions Three: "Search For the Golden God" | Synopsis6 = In a waterfront dive, Nifty, Spike, and Don, the Companions Three get into a barroom brawl, beating down and chasing away a large number of dock wallopers. The fight got started when the three airmen just luckily happened to notice that young Cassie Bennett was in the midst of getting abducted by these creeps. Cassie's story is that her father, Professor Bennett, has gone to South America in search of the legendary Golden God, and that she has a map of his findings. She came to this dive to hire Hook Harroday, the bar's owner, to organize an expedition. Instead Hook and his hoodlums had tried to kidnap her. Well it just so happens that the Companions Three have got a long-range airplane, so they volunteer to go along with Cassie to find the Professor, and they get started on that right away. From under some overturned furniture nearby, Hook Harroday hears them team up, and he's already seen the map, so Hook gets busy. He flies to South America, locates the long-lost Temple of the Golden God, meets the Gongo tribe that live there now, and cons them into making him their new god and discarding their old one, then rules over them. All of this happens before the Companions Three arrive. The team's plane arrives over the Amazon Jungle, and Gongo tribesmen shoot it down with a massive anti-aircraft crossbow. They land in a clearing and disembark; the plane is damaged. And they've left all their guns inside it. A white-bearded chief Gongo spear-wielder, with a bone thru his nose, approaches the four, then more and younger warriors close in from all sides, then they rush in. The Companions and Cassie all get captured, then they meet up with another captive, Professor Bennett. Bennett is fluent in Gongo language, and he has bad news: the tribe has a terrible new god and all five of them are going to be sacrificed to it, with horrible torture. They're marched into the big temple, past the old Golden God laying in a yard, and into a throne room, where they meet the "new god" who turns out to be Hook Harroday. Don is whapped onto the altar and Harroday gets ready to rip out his heart with his hook, while Spike and Nifty quietly get back-to-back and untie each other's knots. Then they jump Hook and beat up some Gongo spearmen, and escape via a high window, then grab the very heavy Golden Idol from the yard, and drag it to the clearing where they first landed. After some hasty repairs to their plane, the Companions Three load the Golden Idol aboard it, and take off, just as the Gongos catch up. Five of them grab the airplane as it takes off, and the pilot rolls the plane to shake them off. They fly the idol back to the big city and the museum pays the Professor a lot of money for it, of which the Companions get a share. | Appearing6 = Featured Characters * ** Nifty ** Spike ** Don Antagonists: * Hook Harroday * Gongo savages Other Characters: * Professor Bennett * Cassie Bennett Locations: * ** Amazon Jungle *** Temple of the Golden God (step-pyramid) Items: * golden idol * map Vehicles: * Companions Three's 2-engine cargo airplane | Writer7_1 = | Penciler7_1 = Ralph Carlson | Inker7_1 = Ralph Carlson | StoryTitle7 = Buck Jones, Frontier Marshal: "Menace In the Mine" | Synopsis7 = Tad Beardsley and his big gang claim-jumps old Mr. Miller's second-hand gold mine, and imprisons him inside it, but Miller's daughter gets away. Three killers pursue her but she finds the Marshal, Buck Jones, and his sidekick Mike, and these two easily ambush and capture the chasers. Then they raid the mine, and rescue old Miller, who believes that his daughter is already dead, and so insanely detonates some dynamite, collapsing the mine. Only Buck, Mike, and the Millers survive. | Appearing7 = Featured Characters * Buck Jones, Frontier Marshal Supporting Characters: * Mike Antagonists: * Purple Hood Gang * Tad Beardsley ** Jeff ** Montana ** six other outlaws Other Characters: * Miss Miller * Mr. Miller Locations: * Old West ** Big Savage (town) Animal: * Prince, Miss Miller's horse | StoryTitle8 = Zoro, The Mystery Man: "The Secret of Rantrill Mansion" | Synopsis8 = In the Rantrill Mansion, in the swamp lands of Florida, a masked figure is using electronic equipment to turn men into beasts. Zoro and Cheeta show up at this mansion one night, are curtly rebuffed at the front door by the butler, and circle around the house in Zoro's open-top roadster. Cheeta stays in the car while Zoro scales a wall and then climbs up some very stout ivy to peek in a window. He sees a guy getting transformed, and leaps into the room, but the masked man calls two more beast men into the room, and the fight goes badly for Zoro. They throw Zoro into a cell, unsupervised, untied, and conscious. He quickly pries up some floor stones and starts digging a tunnel with his cane. Soon he encounters Cheeta, who has tunneled in from the other side, and has brought Zoro's bag with him. Pulling a vial from the bag, Zoro empties its contents into his sword cane. Soon Zoro gets an opportunity to ambush one beast man, knocks him out with a heavy wooden stool, and injects him with the fluid in his sword-cane. The brute quickly shrinks to the size of a normal man, and gets clothing and glasses too, plus now can talk. He's Robert Rantrill. Bob, Cheeta, and Zoro race up a circular staircase out of the mansion's enormous dungeon. Upstairs they find Rantrill's bedridden mother, guarded by a beast man. Bob lures the brute outside, Zoro trips him up, and applies the same antidote; this guy also gets his clothes back, and turns out to be Bob's brother John. And brother Roger is on his way in from out of town, so Zoro impersonates Roger, gets captured by the evil butler, who marches him in to meet the masked monster-maker. This guy is very surprised indeed to see Zoro, as Roger, believing Roger to be murdered, by himself. The butler tries to head-konk Zoro with a pistol-butt, from behind, but Cheeta springs and grabs him by the throat. The masked guy gets punched out by Zoro, and turns out to be Garvey, Bob's half-brother, who had been disowned for thievery. As Zoro laughingly telephone calls in the police, Garvey is seated in a chair and the butler is face down on the floor, seemingly dead. | Writer8_1 = | Penciler8_1 = Mac Raboy | Inker8_1 = Mac Raboy | Appearing8 = Featured Characters: * Supporting Characters: * Cheeta, Zoro's pet cheetah Antagonists: * butler * Garvey Other Characters: * three beast men ** Robert Rantrill ** John Rantrill ** third guy Locations: * ** swamp lands *** Rantrill Mansion Items: * Garvey's electronic equipment for transforming men into beasts ** causes enlargement of the tissues and produces apish growth * Zoro's sword-cane * Zoro's antidote for transforming beast men into men ** made from secret jungle herbs Vehicles: * Zoro's open-top roadster. | Notes = * Bulletman dodges some bullets in "Mr. Murder". He seldom if ever bothers to do this, because he's bulletproof. * Captain Venture ** The Vis-Audiograph is a future machine that can be tuned to interplanetary space, making it possible to see and hear anywhere. * Companions Three: At the end of "Search For the Golden God", Hook Harroday is still alive and free, at large in South America, and presumably still ruling over the Gongo tribe. He will return, in , with his name changed to "Hook Harrigan". * El Carim: In the last panel, El Carim breaks the Fourth Wall by looking out at the reader and declaring that he'll be back next month. * Minute-Man's villain Nuggerud is last seen running his motorcycle off a precipice. Death not confirmed in art, caption, or dialogue. * Zoro: In the last panel Zoro looks right through the Fourth Wall and addresses the reader directly. He explains what the beast-making machine did, and what the antidote was made of, but nothing else. * Also appearing in this issue of Master Comics were: ** "Amazing Oddities" ** "An Old Man's Wrath" (text story) by Carl Formes | Trivia = | Recommended = | Links = * Master Comics #15, June 1941 }}